About

My research lies at the intersection between philosophy of science, metaphysics, and value theory. Despite the breadth of these topics, I am pressed with one main question: how are we to make sense of regular natural phenomena in a contingent, exceeding complex world? When nature seems like a blooming, buzzing confusion, what accounts for the remarkable sameness of biological processes like protein synthesis, synaptic transmission, and natural selection? Laws of nature, natural necessity, mechanisms, and probability play major roles in our scientific explanations of observable regularities. But, when faced with the inevitable underdetermination of explanation by the evidence, so do extra-theoretic values like simplicity, unification, fecundity, and explanatory power. I am fascinated by trying to understand these roles.

Topics I have recently written about include: the role of randomized controlled trials for determining causation, scientific explanation as both causal and modal, mechanisms in evolutionary biology, and the theoretical vices of the extended mind.